


Bound to Be Set Free

by junko



Series: Written in the Scars (of Our Hearts) [4]
Category: Bleach
Genre: F/M, M/M, Original Character(s), POV Original Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-07
Updated: 2013-05-07
Packaged: 2017-12-10 16:46:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/788214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junko/pseuds/junko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Byakuya avoids saying goodbye to Renji; Renji wakes up hungover to discover he's done something REALLY stupid (even for him)....</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bound to Be Set Free

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks go to Josey (cestus) for her usual beta-awesomeness.

Byakuya sipped his tea and listened to Rukia’s happy chatter over breakfast. She was clearly very excited to see Ichigo Kurosaki again. Juice boxes, he reminded himself. There must be juice boxes for the wedding.

This morning there was no juice in a mysterious box, only uneaten fish on Byakuya’s plate. It was far too early for his stomach, especially after its upset yesterday, but he’d instructed Eishirō to wake him so that he could have breakfast with Rukia before she left for the Human World.

Last night’s rain had brought a cool, fresh morning. He and Rukia sat on a porch that overlooked the gardens of the small courtyard near her suites. The moist air smelled of fallen, wet leaves. Though autumn had already stolen much of the color from the plants, the rain returned a gloss to the needles of the cedar pine that dominated the landscape. The dew darkened the large gray boulders. It was stately, but desolate.

Much how Byakuya felt.

As nice as their dinner out had been, Byakuya wished Renji could have stayed the night. The bed had felt too big and empty without Renji snoring beside him, hogging all the covers. 

It was strange the things a person missed.

Yet, Byakuya felt he had only himself to blame for his loneliness. 

Renji had run off so suddenly last night--just after their intimate, casual touch, too. It was clear that something about their interaction had bothered him. Had something reminded Renji of the unresolved issues between them? Byakuya glanced down at the kimono he’d slept in, the one he’d worn last night: the amber kimono. Had seeing it bothered Renji? If Byakuya only known that Renji would be returning to the estate, he would have chosen almost any other, perhaps the hidden frog kimono or---

“I said: are you coming to the senkaimon to see us off, nii-sama?” Rukia asked, clearly for the second time.

“There’s no need,” he replied tersely. The fact of the matter was he wasn’t sure he could stand watching both of the greatest joys of his life walking away from him, into the mouth of danger. Everyone would see the loss on his face, feel grief radiating from his reiatsu. 

Rukia’s face crumpled a little in disappointment. Ah! So much like Hisana! It was eerie and heartbreaking, especially when she stuck out her bottom lip, and asked, “Not even to say goodbye to Renji?”

“Especially not to say goodbye to Renji,” Byakuya said stiffly, feeling an ache in his heart at the thought. It would be nearly impossible to refrain from going to him, clinging to him, and begging him to stay. He shook his head. “How would that look?”

“Isn’t he going to be expecting you?” she pressed.

“We made our goodbyes last night, Rukia. Renji hardly needs me fretting over him, making leaving more difficult than it already is.”

“Oh,” Rukia brightened a little, and her eyes twinkled in a way that reminded Byakuya of one of Hisana’s clever, teasing smiles. “When you say it like that, it makes more sense. You don’t want to see him go!”

“I don’t,” Byakuya agreed. “Of course I don’t, but he must. As must you. It’s never easy to stay behind and let others fight the battle. I’ll worry about you. I’ll miss you.”

Rukia’s eyes trembled with emotion. Byakuya was afraid she might burst into tears. Instead, she impulsively stretched across the table and put her arms around Byakuya’s neck in a tight hug. He nearly spilled his tea trying to get it out of the way in time. Her shihakushô and Sode no Shirayuki clanged the platters on the tray between them. It was an uncouth and unsightly gesture of affection, but Byakuya adored her for it. 

“I love you, too, nii-sama,” she whispered in his ear. Giving him a peck on the cheek she let him go. She gave him a bright smile as she settled back down, “I’ll take care of Renji for you.”

#

Renji was so hung over it hurt to think. 

That was probably just as well, because if he thought too hard he’d have to wonder how it was he ended up sprawled on a bench outside the Eleventh division’s practice hall with Yumichika curled up in his lap.

Reaching down, Renji pulled on an eyebrow feather. “Hey, we didn’t fuck, did we?”

“Sadly, no,” Yumichika muttered into his thigh. “You were far too busy being morose.”

“More rose?”

“Morose, you moron,” Yumichika said, sitting up to straighten his uniform and fix the strands of his hair that were out of place. Renji moved his legs to give Yumichika more space. “It’s French for ‘Stuck on Kuchiki.’”

“Ha, ha,” Renji said. As he put his feet on the ground his muscles pulled in a way that made the backs and sides of his calves ache strangely. They felt raw… a little stiff and scabbed over… itchy… a very familiar feeling that he couldn’t quite place. Lifting the leg of his hakama, he instantly saw the cause.

Fresh tattoos.

He now had tiger stripes on both calves. 

Yumichika noticed him admiring them. “You owe me,” he sniffed. “You were this close to having them put ‘Byakuya Kuchiki’ on your cheeks.”

Renji nodded absently, sort of half-remembering the argument and Zabimaru’s alternate suggestion. A deeper worry gnawed at his gut, though. Even as he asked, he was fumbling in his shirts, “Uh… how did I pay for these? I’m skinned.”

“You offered some ugly little trinket in barter,” Yumichika said, standing up to adjust Ruri'iro Kujaku. “Frankly, I think you ripped them off.”

“Shit,” Renji hung his head. 

“Buyer’s remorse, eh?” Yumichika asked with a flip of his hair. “Don’t fret over it. The tattoos are far prettier than that broken bit of ceramic. Anyway, you sounded like you hated it last night. You told the horishi that you had to get rid of it before it got stained… or corrupted, or whatever nonsense you were going on about. Honestly, Renji, you were a wreck. You spent half the night trying to convince me how disgusting and filthy you were, and then you never made good on any of it. You’re not dirty; you’re a tease!” 

At Yumichika’s words, Renji suddenly remembered what had triggered his desire for a drinking spree. Eishirō had said something about how Third Seat’s proof might be some kind of measurable, detectable ‘pollution’ that Renji was somehow emitting that sullied Byakuya’s purer soul. Or… something like that, Renji wasn’t so clear on the details in the harsh light of morning.

All he knew was that he really was some kind of dirty dog.

“Shit,” he said again.

“Stop whining, Renji,” Yumichika sighed, putting a hand on his shoulder and giving him a little reassuring squeeze. “What’s done is done. Let’s grab some grub, and then see if we can remember where we parked Ikkaku.”

#

The master was alone in Lady Rukia’s courtyard garden. Byakuya-sama sat like a child. His feet were bare, and he’d gone into the garden to perch on top of one of the boulders. Arms wrapped around his knees, he seemed to be staring up at the branches of the cedar pine. Another might mistake his expression as contemplative, but Eishirō had seen his lordship like this far too often. 

He was grieving. 

It was difficult to know how to handle Byakuya-sama when he was like this. Sometimes he’d show off a surprising temper when interrupted. Other times, he seemed to relish being pulled out of himself into work. The problem, of course, was that what his lordship had to deal with today would likely exacerbate his sense of loss. 

“Are you planning on skulking around the edges all day, Eishirō?”

Of course, Byakuya-sama could detect his presence! A bright blush colored Eishirō’s face, and he came out from behind the shoji screen to kneel on the porch, “No, my lord, my apologies. I only wished to leave your privacy undisturbed. Your lady aunt has requested a breakfast meeting. Shall I tell her you’re otherwise occupied?”

“That would be lovely, but I suppose I can’t delay the inevitable.” He uncurled himself from the stone and stood up, turning to where Eishirō kept his face pressed to the floor boards. “A meeting, you say? Does that mean she intends to include my Third Seat?”

“It does, my lord,” Eishirō was grateful Byakuya-sama had picked up on that clue. He’d wanted to warn him of the ambush, “As well as her candidate’s mother.”

“The mother?” Byakuya-sama sounded horrified, as well he should. The woman in question was even more of an old battle axe than the Lady Masama. Byakuya-sama continued with a slight teasing tone, “The mother? Over breakfast? Egads, thank goodness I’ve had plenty of tea already. Very well, in that case, let them wait on me. Have my full uniform ready for me. Between that and the kenseikan, my authority should be clear to all parties.”

“We shall hope, my lord.”

#

Renji had to get the kenseikan necklace back from the tattooist in a hurry. No matter what he was saying last night, no amount of tattoo work was worth that much white jade. Not to mention the fact that it was a gift. From Byakuya. And, it was Significant, and Meaningful, and if Byakuya ever found out he’d traded it for ink, he’d be deader than dead. 

Starting to feel panicked, Renji shunpō’d to the West Gate. He had about two hours before they were meant to gather at the Thirteenth Division’s senkaimon. He was already delayed by having to console Yumichika. Yumichika had been in a right snit when they finally found Ikkaku, passed out, naked, and entangled in the arms of an equally nude and unconscious Matsumoto. 

That had been a shocker. 

Once Yumichika finally stopped spitting like a startled snake, he explained that he and Ikkaku always had some kind of open arrangement and every once and awhile Ikkaku felt some bizarre need go off and prove his attractiveness to the opposite sex or… something. Yumichika seemed to think it would last for a couple of months, and then all would be well again. In the meantime, it opened up his prospects, and, by the time Renji was making his excuses, Yumichika was already making a list of potential conquests.

Renji didn’t hang around to find out if he was on the list, but after last night, he doubted he ever would be again.

Anyway, it was just as well. The whole thing struck Renji as particularly weird since pretty much the entire Seireitei assumed Ikkaku and Yumichika were lovers and had been since before the dawn of time. How either of them could get dates was beyond him. Sure, he’d had sex with them—but both them, together, as a couple—that was the only way it made any sense to Renji. It’d be like asking Ukitake to hook-up as if Kyōraku wasn’t in the picture… you just didn’t do that. Honestly, it would feel gross, like trying to break-up your parents, or best couple friends.

Maybe it was just a thing they did, but Renji hoped Ikkaku got over it soon. It messed up his sense of what was right in the universe.

Once through the Seireitei gate, Renji came out of shunpō in front of a shop marked with the kanji: irezumi, for tattooing. Given the hour, it was no surprise to find the shutters closed and the place locked up tightly. He pounded on the door, and shouted loud enough, he hoped, to be heard in the back rooms, “Oi, open up! I left something here last night!”

A few minutes of this, and the neighbors were peeking out of the neighboring shuttered shops. Renji heard someone tell a child to go around the back and rouse the horishi. 

Renji was surprised when the door finally unlocked and he was looking at a woman. 

Trying to remember if she was the artist from last night, he squinted at her, particularly the lovely tribal tattoos on the side of her face that curved down her neck to disappear into the collar of her simple green yukata. Before he could verify, she took in his uniform and said, “Ah, finally! You come to collect your friend, right? He’s still passed out in my front room.”

“Uh, yeah,” Renji said, since she was opening the door and letting him inside. Sure enough, snoring on the tattooing table was a shinigami Renji half-recognized from last night. Definitely from the Eleventh, though, by the looks of him, “Okay, right. Listen, I’ll get this guy out of your hair, ma’am, but I don’t suppose there’d be any chance you’d give me back that necklace I gave you last night?”

She gave him a curious look, cocking her head. Her dark hair was short and spiky, and if Renji didn’t know better, he’d think she was Hisagi’s sister; she looked so much like him, “Tiger stripes for jade, right?”

Renji winced but nodded. He’d been sort of hoping she hadn’t noticed what the necklace was made of. At least she hadn’t said anything about it being part of the kenseikan. 

“I wondered if it was sentimental the way you were going on about it. Sobered up and realized you gave away the family heirloom, eh?”

And a small fortune. Besides, it might not be his family heirloom, per se, but it was definitely Byakuya’s, “Yeah, exactly.”

“All right,” she nodded. Kneeling down she pulled a lockbox from under a small shelf containing all her inks and supplies. “I’ll trade it back for the cash you owe me.”

Renji scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah, that’s fair, but…uh, see, I’m kind of low on actual money right now.”

“Oh?”

“But, I can get it to you. I can make arrangements to send something to you in—“ Renji paused to calculate the days left until payday, “—eight days.”

She shoved the locked box back into its hidey hole. “If I had ken for every time I heard that…“ she muttered. “Look, I’m sorry, but the sign says sales are final. You pay cash or barter, no exceptions and certainly no IOUs. Collect your drinking buddy and go.”

Renji glanced at the snoring, drooling guy on the table, and back to the horishi. “Could you at least hold the necklace for me? How soon until you see your fence? I mean, you ain’t wearing it, so you must be fixing to sell.” Renji paled to think of what would happen if a piece of the kenseikan hit the open market. He had to cough to hide his gnawing fear. “Seriously, can’t you just wait a bit? I’m only asking for just over a week. Give me a chance get the cash together. Don’t you have anything else you want in trade? I got an extra pair of hakama, as it happens. A little hemming up, and they could fit you nice. That’s a lot of silk, you know. Uh, which you can’t legally wear—but, hey, it’s got to be a lot easier to get market value for it, doesn’t it? I mean, the fences I knew wouldn’t even let you unload highly personal stuff like a necklace. Too hard to find buyers with the same tastes--so yeah, silk, right? Better deal, don’t you think? Or maybe there’s something else I might do for you? Clean the place-- uh, not that I’m saying it’s that it’s dirty! -- but maybe some heavy lifting or… uh, um, --” Renji petered out at the horishi’s expression.

She was sitting back on her heels, listening patiently to his increasingly rambling, frantic argument, “Renji Abarai, right? Lieutenant of the Sixth?”

“Yeah?”

She pointed to her own forehead and then at her biceps, “Your work is pretty recognizable. Mizushuma’s needle is an Inuzuri legend. I was pleased to have added to the body of work, as it were. As a favor to an old master, I suppose I could take a promissory note from you.” She pulled out a pad and a receipt book, “But the money better show up in eight days or your heirloom is going to market, you hear?” Renji nodded in horrified understanding, as she continued, “You’d better not breathe a word of this to anyone, either, and especially not those drunken hoodlums you were hanging around with last night. If word gets out I’ve gone soft…” She sighed. “And another thing: take that mutt with you. He’s stinking up the place.”

“Yes, yes! I’ll do all that, thank you! Thank you so much, ma’am.” He must have bowed a million times, until he thought he might get sick on her floor. She told him to stop anyway, he was embarrassing her. Then, Renji wrote his note and took her receipt with the terms written out on them. 

It wasn’t the same leaving with a piece of paper, but it was much, much better than nothing.

Shouldering the Eleventh division guy, he waved another grateful goodbye to the horishi and turned toward the West Gate. Now he just had to figure out who he could trust with the job of delivering the cash and holding on to the necklace for him.

#

“Me, sir?” Eishirō looked at the receipt Renji had handed to him, and tried, for the second time, to hand it back.

“You’re the only person I know who understands how important it is. I can’t exactly trust anyone in the Sixth, since it’s kind of hardcore evidence of my relationship with the captain. And, all my colleagues from the Eleventh would—well, frankly, they’d take my money and forget about the necklace. Maybe not intentionally, but they aren’t exactly what you’d call reliable. Please say you will, please?” Renji said. The lieutenant’s brown eyes were too narrow and small to successfully pull of the innocent, blinking beg, but they managed a kind of desperate hope in them that Eishirō had hitherto only seen on puppies. 

“Oh, very well,” Eishirō said, sticking the note into the inner pocket of his black service kimono. “Now hurry along, Lieutenant, you must be very nearly late, and you’re keeping me from serving the big meeting upstairs.”

Renji bowed gratefully, but paused to ask, “Meeting? Is he with Masama and the candidate?”

“Candidate’s mother,” Eishirō corrected, “Plus your Third. It’s quite the gathering.”

Renji flashed him a toothy grin and an understanding nod. “Juicy gossip, eh? Right, well, I owe you big time for this! I’ve made sure the money will ready for you at the lieutenant’s office in eight days. Please don’t forget. Byakuya would shit if I lose that thing, and, god forbid, it hit the open market.”

“I believe I understand the depths of your foolishness,” Eishirō sniffed, as he shooed Renji off. “Now, for heaven’s sake, go.”

#

The candidate’s mother clearly thought she was going straight for the jugular. She glanced Byakuya over disapprovingly, and asked, “You were married before?”

Byakuya smiled inwardly at her misstep. She clearly hoped to shame him by this ‘failure.’ She was the sort who overdressed for every occasion. It was true that Byakuya had dressed in his uniform, but compared to her layers of shiny, colorful kimono, he looked positively dour.

Taking a piece of smoked salmon for his own plate, Byakuya nodded, “Yes, I was, quite happily, for six years. Hisana was a former orian, from Inuzuri. We were the talk of the kabuki scene and entertained several famous avant guarde actors here in this very room.”

Stunned silence fell. Aunt Masama looked like she really wanted to smack Byakuya’s thigh with her fan. Well, he had no intention of playing the perfect prospect. Surely, she must have known that he would resist any way he could.

“Really?” The Third Seat, Miisho Ōta, was impressed. “I had no idea, Taicho! Anyone I would have heard of?”

“Most likely,” Byakuya agreed. “Due to her former profession, Hisana had many friends who were onnagata. Her contacts meant we were able to gain access to Yoshizawa Ayame.”

“Oh!” The Third clapped his hands. “Is it true he acted the part of a woman even off stage?”

“Yes, he never dropped character,” Byakuya explained. “Though I daresay, Hisana disliked him. She feared he was more beautiful and more perfectly female than she. For my part, I found him a bit overdone. I prefer a woman who is more natural and less concerned with idealized feminine virtues,” Byakuya turned to the candidate’s mother. “Does your daughter appreciate street theatre?”

“Absolutely not,” she said, her face green.

“That’s a shame,” Byakuya said, taking the rice the Third Seat offered him. “I’ve never lost my love of kabuki and hoped to one day endow a theatre in the Kuchiki name.”

Aunt Masama hissed. “You never said!”

“I’ve been thinking about my legacy a lot recently, as it happens,” Byakuya told her. “I should wish it to be something more than violence and death. Senbonzakura is like the falling cherry blossoms, and, thus, I’m determined to leave behind something of beauty, something reminiscent of the festival of the Hanami. What better than the pageantry of theatre?”

“Couldn’t you just plant a tree, Byakuya-chan?” Masama asked.

“I have already planted an entire cherry orchard,” Byakuya said, taking a bite of his breakfast. “But that’s only for my enjoyment. I’d wish for beauty for everyone, high and low, alike. Theatre fits that perfectly, because, like the cherry blossom festival, it’s transitory and seasonal. Perhaps a school for actors? One specializing in wakashū-gata roles? Something to reflect my current attractions.”

“Oh, I think that would be lovely,” the Third agreed, totally missing Byakuya’s reference to the type of theatre that specifically featured love stories between men. “That’s a very noble legacy, sir.”

“I’m glad you think so,” Byakuya said politely. 

The women sat huddled together in a kind of horrified stillness. Byakuya couldn’t have been more pleased when the Third Seat shyly asked, “So… which other actors did you and Hisana know, sir?”

**Author's Note:**

> The kabuki actor Byakuya mentions above was a real historical character. I like to think, perhaps, in the afterlife, he continued to perform.
> 
> Also, the timing of Renji's tattoos. I suspect there are moments in the Manga where you could show me these don't exist yet. All I know is that some fan artists include them, and I like the idea of them, and we know they don't exist when Renji is seen first kicking Rikichi in the Rescue Arc. So, they're a plot coupon that I cashed in using my poetic liscence. All sales are final. ;-)


End file.
